Mark Burns-Williamson, West Yorkshire's
Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) is helping to tackle hate and
'mate' crime in West Yorkshire.

'Mate' crime is where someone befriends a potentially vulnerable
person with the intention of exploiting the person, this could
include financial, physical or sexual abuse.

The PCC's Safer Communities Fund granted £4960 to an
organisation called Why Don't We, for a project to help raise
awareness of, and prevent, disability hate and 'mate' crime.

Why Don't We is a Bradford based charity, which supports adults
with learning disabilities to address issues which affect their
lives, raise awareness of forms of prejudice and abuse against
those with learning disabilities, enable them to speak for
themselves and enable their voices to be heard by the wider
community.

The funded project involved working with adults with learning
disabilities around mate crime at workshops throughout 2017. They
also worked with Health and Social Care students at Bradford
College to help develop the resources and this allowed the students
to advance their learning through the participant's life
experiences.

The project used photography and sound recording to explore
issues and create animated slide shows to help participants make
sense of what can be a difficult concept. The resources created
were based on real experiences from the Why Don't We project.

Why Don't We are also hoping to expand the project and provide
training to key groups such as social workers, social care students
and teachers.

Mark attended the launch event of the 'mate' crime project at
Bradford College yesterday (16/10) where the animated slide shows
were presented to an audience of invited guests, including some of
the participants and students involved.

Mark said: "As difficult to understand as it is, unfortunately
'mate' crime exists and raising awareness and preventing these
issues is so important in safeguarding individuals and our
communities.

"Why Don't We do a really fantastic job of engaging with adults
with learning disabilities in a fun and interactive way. The
presentations they have made will be invaluable to the community,
wider professionals and partners for training and awareness
purposes. It's also great that Health and Social Care students at
the college have been actively engaged in this work and I can't
thank them all enough for their contributions to this work.

"This week is Hate Crime Awareness Week, which is a national
campaign dedicated to raising awareness of hate crime, 'mate' crime
and hate incidents so this launch event could not have been better
timed and also fits squarely with our joint Hate Hurts campaign
with West Yorkshire Police."

Tony O'Connell, the Project Coordinator at Why Don't We, said:
"The people we support have done a brilliant job in helping to
raise awareness of this difficult issue. Hearing true stories from
the people affected has a powerful impact on those who hear
them.

Working with Bradford College, has given us direct access to
people who will be supporting vulnerable people in the future and
we look forward to continuing this partnership."